“What have you done to me that I should forgive you? pray, explain. As the offense cannot be great,” she went on with a melancholy smile, “the pardon will be easy. Did Philip give you the key?”
“The key?”
“Of course, for it was agreed that I should admit nobody in his absence and he must have helped you in, unless you scaled the wall.”
“O, happiness unhoped for, that you should not have left the land! I thought to find the place deserted and only your memory remaining. Chance only – but I hardly know what I am saying. It was your father that I wanted to see – ”
“Why my father?”
Gilbert mistook the nature of the question.
“Because I was too frightened of you to – and yet, I do not know but that it would be better for us to keep it to ourselves. It is the surest way to repair my boldness in lifting my eyes to you. But the misfortune is accomplished – the crime, if you will, for really it was a great crime. Accuse fate, but not my heart – ”
“You are mad, and you alarm me.”
“Oh, if you will consent to marriage to sanctify this guilty union.”
“Marriage,” said Andrea, receding.
“For pity, consent to be my wife!”
“Your wife?”
“Oh,” sobbed Gilbert, “say that you forgive me for that dreadful night, that my outrage horrifies, but you forgive me for my repentance; say that my long restrained love justifies my action.”
“Oh, it was you?” shrieked Andrea with savage fury. “Oh, heavens!”
Gilbert recoiled before this lovely Medusa’s head expressing astonishment and fright.
“Was this misery reserved for me, oh, God?” said the noble girl, “to see my name doubly disgraced – by the crime and by the criminal? Answer me, coward, wretch, was it you?”
“She was ignorant,” faltered Gilbert, astounded.
“Help, help,” screamed Andrea, rushing into the house; “here he is, Philip!”
He followed her close.
“Would you murder me,” she hissed, brought to bay.
“No; it is to do good, not harm that this time I have come. If I proposed marriage it was to act my part fitly; and I did not even expect you to bear my name. But there is another for whom see these one hundred thousand livres which a generous patron gives me for marriage portion.”
He placed the banknotes on the table which served as barrier between them. “I want nothing but the little air I breathe and the little pit, my grave, while the child, my child, our child has the money!”
“Man, you make a grave error,” said she, “you have no child. It has but one parent, the mother – you are not the father of my infant.”
Taking up the notes, she flung them in his face as he retreated. He was made so furious that Andrea’s good angel might tremble for her. But at the same moment the door was slammed in his flaming face as if by that violent act she divided the past forever from the present.
CHAPTER XL
DECEMBER THE FIFTEENTH
IN the morning after a sleepless night, Gilbert went to Count Fenix’s.
The count was lounging on a sofa as though he, too, had not slept during the night.
“Oh, it is our bridegroom,” he said, laying aside the book he had opened but was not reading.
“No, my lord,” replied Gilbert, “I have been sent about my business.”
The count turned round entirely.
“Who did this?”
“The lady.”
“That was certain; you ought to have dealt with the father.”
“Fate forbad it.”
“Fate? so we are fatalists?”
“I have no right to believe in faith.”
“Do not juggle with balls which you do not know,” said Balsamo, eyeing him with curiosity as he frowned. “In grown men it is nonsense, in the young, rashness. Have pride but don’t be a fool. To resume, what have you done?”
“Nothing; so I return the money,” and he counted out minutely the notes on the table.
“He is honest,” mused the count, “not avaricious. He has wit; he has firmness. He is a man.”
“Now I want to account for the two louis I had.”
“Do not overdo it,” said the other: “it is handsome to restore a hundred thousand, but puerile to return fifty.”
“I was not going to return them, but I wanted to show how I spent them, for I need to borrow twenty thousand.”
“You do not mean any evil to the woman?”
“No, not to her father or her brother.”
“I know: but one may wound by dogging a person and annoying him.”
“Far from anything of that kind, I want to leave the country.”
“But it would not cost you more than one thousand for that,” said Balsamo, in his keen yet unctuous voice conveying no emotions.
“My lord, I shall not have a penny in my pocket when I go aboard the ship: and I want it for reparation of my fault, which you facilitated – ”
“You are rather given to harping on the one string,” observed the other, with a curling lip.